“The sopranos are a good deal better smelling and friendlier.”

“That they are.” Tony blinked at his drink, perhaps wondering how the thing had gotten so quickly empty. “There’s one little Italian gal from the chorus, and I swear that mouth of hers could devour—”

“Anthony, we’re in proper company.” To the extent a card room of reprobates and dowagers could be considered proper at the end of a long evening.

At the peremptory note in Percy’s voice, Tony blinked. “Is it time to go home?”

Not for another twenty days. “We’re certainly not going back to Canada tonight.”

“Bloody cold in Canada,” Tony observed, apropos of nothing.

“True.” Percy set his drink aside and debated whether to leave Tony to his own devices at such a late hour. “At least in Canada the savages announce themselves as such, observe certain rules of engagement, and don’t use the minuet to scout out the opposition.”

“That’s exactly what I mean!” Tony gestured with his glass a trifle wildly. Then paused as if he’d heard an arresting sound. “I’ll be stepping to the gent’s retiring room for a moment.”

“Of course.” And Percy would not allow his younger brother to stumble through the corridors, half-disguised, in charity with the world, only to be pulled into a convenient broom closet by some enterprising debutante.

They negotiated the dimly lit passages without incident—unless a giggle from a secluded alcove on the second floor could be considered an incident. As Tony unbuttoned his falls and took a lean against a handy wall in the men’s retiring room, he aimed an oddly sober look at his brother.

“I’ve had this notion, lately, Perce.”

The man could piss and philosophize at the same time—a true exponent of the aristocracy. “Any particular notion?”

“It’s a queer notion, as queer as considering a vocation in the church.”

“Which you did for about fifteen minutes, until you recalled that bit about poverty, chastity, and obedience.” For Percy, five minutes’ contemplation of a life in the church had seen him buying his colors. “For God’s sake, button up if you’re done.”

“What? Oh, indeed.”

This late in the evening, Tony’s fingers were clumsy, though his brain apparently continued to lumber around and his mouth danced attendance on it. “I’ve had the notion Her Grace might be right. Petey ain’t getting any younger, and his lady ain’t dropped a bull calf in ten years of marriage.”

Tony was the only person in the whole of the realm who could refer to the Marquess of Pembroke, heir to the Moreland ducal title, as “Petey.”

“Lady Pembroke could yet conceive a son.”

“Canada is cold, Perce. It’s full of wolves and savages and colonials with very big, loud guns and little allegiance to dear King George.”

When Tony had fumbled a few buttons closed in relevant locations, Percy linked his arm through his brother’s. “Are you thinking of selling out and joining the ranks of retired bachelors?”

That would solve a significant problem for Percy, true, but the idea of boarding a ship for the colonies at the end of the Season and not having Tony there to provide his inane commentary was disquieting.

“I’m thinking of taking a bride,” Tony said, much of the bonhomie leaving his voice. “You like all that military whatnot, the pomp and nonsense, for King and Country. I like to be warm and well fed, to tup pretty girls, and spend my quarterly in two weeks flat.”

And so had Percy, until a few years in charge of several hundred younger sons and rascals like Tony had somehow soured the allure of returning to an idle existence. Then Her Grace had taken this notion to recall her sons from the provinces and lecture them about Duty to the Succession, Familial Loyalty, and Social Responsibility.

The woman put the average gunnery sergeant to shame with her harangues.

“You are not ideal husband material, Tony.” Percy spoke as gently as he could. “The ladies like some constancy for the first few years of marriage. They like to show off their trophy and drag a new husband about on calls. You’ve got the place in Hampshire, and you’d be expected to tend your acres for much of the year.”

Tony was silent until they reached the head of the stairs. “You’re saying I’d have to leave my bed before noon. Save the drinking until after supper, show up for parade inspection, the same as in Canada. Scout the terrain, deal with the locals.”

Put like that, civilian life didn’t sound like much of an adjustment.

“A wife would take umbrage at the opera singers. She’d expect pin money and babies.”

“Babies aren’t so bad.”

Tony sounded wistful, though he was right: babies were dear and about as easy to love as a human being could be. A man with two adorable nieces could admit such a thing easily—to himself. On the one hand, if Tony married and produced babies—male babies in particular—then Percy could sail back to the regiment despite Her Grace’s harangues and blustering.

And yet, on the other hand, to leave Tony behind in the clutches of a duchess-in-training, no older brother to seek consolation and counsel with, Her Grace looming over the marriage with a calendar in one hand and a receiving blanket in the other…

The Marquess of Pembroke was a decent fellow, but he hadn’t been able to hide from his younger brothers what the duchess’s interference had done to an otherwise civil and sanguine union.

“You’ll not be marrying anybody just yet, Tony Windham. As a duke’s son, you’re a prime catch. At least look over the possibilities at some length and think of your chorus girl.”

“Right-o, dear, sweet, little… the Italian—whatever her name is.”

“The one with the devouring mouth.”

* * *

A room to oneself was a mixed blessing at a gathering like Lady Morrisette’s. On the one hand, Esther had a little privacy in those rare moments when she wasn’t stepping and fetching for her betters, and particularly for Lady Morrisette.

On the other hand, a lady with a room to herself had to guard doubly against the gentlemen who “accidentally” stumbled into her chambers late at night. She also had no one with whom to discuss the day’s small revelations, such as how hard it had been not to watch Lord Percival Windham as he showed one lady after another how to hold her bow and let fly her arrows.

While Esther had lost the archery contest only by deliberately aiming her last shots wide of the bull’s-eye, Charlotte’s accuracy with a barbed comment was not to be underestimated, regardless of how desperately she’d needed Lord Percy’s assistance with her bow.

Esther flipped back the covers and eased from the bed—the cot. She’d had a choice of sleeping with Lady Pott’s maid in a stuffy little dressing room, or taking this glorified closet under the eaves. The closet had appealed, though on a warm night, it was nigh stifling, and on a cool night it would be frigid.

“I need a posset.”

Closets did not sport bellpulls, so Esther slid her feet into slippers, belted a plain dressing gown over her nightgown, and headed down the maid’s stairs to the kitchen.

A tired scullery maid frowned only slightly at Esther’s request before preparing a cup of hot, spiced, spiked milk.

“There ye be, mum. Will there be anything else?”

Esther took a sip of her posset. “My thanks, it’s very good. Does that door lead to the kitchen garden?”

“It do, and from thence to the scent garden and the cutting garden. The formal garden lies beyond that, and then the knot gardens and the folly.” The maid shot a longing glance at the stool by the hearth, as if even giving these directions made a girl’s feet ache.

Ache worse. After eighteen hours on her feet, the maid was no doubt even more tired than Esther.

“I’ll take my posset to the garden.”

“The guests don’t generally use the kitchen garden, mum.”

“All the better.”

This earned Esther a small, understanding smile. The girl sought her stool, and Esther sought the cooler air of the garden by moonlight—the garden where she’d be safe from wandering guests of either gender.

Kitchen gardens bore a particular scent, a fresh, green, culinary fragrance that tickled Esther’s nose as she found a bench along the far wall. Percival Windham’s comment the day before about the moon being full came to mind, because the garden was limned in silvery light, the moon beaming down in all its beneficent glory.

“So you couldn’t sleep either?”

Esther’s first clue regarding the garden’s other occupant was moonlight gleaming on his unpowdered hair.

“My lord.” She started to rise, only to see Percival Windham’s teeth flash in the shadows.

“Oh, must you?” He approached her bench, gaze trained on the cup in her hand. “Might I join you? I fear the farther reaches of the garden are full of predators stalking large game.”

He sounded tired and not the least flirtatious. Esther pulled her skirts aside when what she ought to be doing was returning to the stuffy, mildewed confines of her garret.

She took a sip of her posset and waited.

“How do you do it, Miss Himmelfarb?”

“My lord?”

He sighed and stretched long legs out before him, crossing his feet at the ankles and leaning back against the wall behind them. Moonlight caught the silver of his shoe buckles and the gold of the ring on his left little finger.

“How do you endure these infernal gatherings? They are exhausting of a man’s fortitude if not his energy. If one more young lady presses a feminine part of her anatomy against my person, I am going to start howling like a wolf and wearing my wig backward.”